Vagal Tone: What It Is and How to Improve It
If you watch medical shows, studied science at school, or are interested in health, you may have heard of something called the “vagus nerve.”
The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in your body, and it connects your brain to every organ.
When your vagus nerve is functioning correctly, you feel at your best. But when it’s underactive, you can develop anxiety, inflammation, or gut issues.
Vagal tone measures the activity of your vagal nerve. If it’s low, you’re chronically in a high-alert state. If it’s high, you can easily switch between high-alert and calm reactions without risking your organ health.
On this page, we explore the ins and outs of the vagus nerve, including:
- What vagal tone is.
- Types of vagal tone.
- How to measure vagal tone.
- Symptoms of low vagal tone.
- How to improve it.
What Is Vagal Tone?
“Vagal tone” describes how well your vagal nerve is working. The vagal nerve helps your body calm down and recover from a high-alert state. It influences your:
- Heart rate.
- Blood pressure.
- Digestion.
When your vagal nerve is functioning correctly, this is called “high tone.” It means your heart rate slows down quickly after a stressful event and you can calm down easily.
But when your vagal nerve is underactive, you have what’s known as “low tone.” This can cause your nervous system to be stuck in fight-or-flight mode, which can cause chronic stress, digestive issues, and high blood pressure.[1]
Types of Vagal Tone
Your vagus nerve has two branches, one that’s slow-acting and one that’s fast-acting. This causes two types of vagal tone:
1. Ventral Vagal Tone
Your ventral vagal branch is the fast-acting branch of the vagus nerve. It helps your heart slow down when you’re under pressure.
When it’s working correctly (high tone), this keeps you calm and focused. It also helps you listen and think clearly under pressure.
At low tone, it can cause you to be stuck in the fight-or-flight state for long periods.
2. Dorsal Vagal Tone
Your dorsal vagal branch is slow-acting. When you’re under overwhelming stress or in life-threatening danger and can’t find a way out of the situation, this branch shuts you down.
When it’s functioning correctly (high tone), it can cause you to:
- Freeze, where you stop responding to the people or situation.
- Dissociate, when you remove yourself mentally from the situation or look at it from an outsider’s perspective.
- Physically collapse, where your heart rate falls suddenly.
However, when your ventral vagal branch is underactive, or you’re in a chronic fight-or-flight state, your nervous system can activate this branch in non-life-threatening situations, like during a presentation, a difficult conversation, or a game.[2]
How to Measure Vagal Tone
Since the vagal nerve connects to all of your organs and extends deep into your abdomen, it’s difficult to measure it directly. This is why we use a heart rate variability (HRV) test to estimate it.
HRV tests the time between each heartbeat to check how well your vagal nerve is controlling your heart rate.
Your physician will use one- to five-minute, sometimes 24-hour, echocardiogram (ECG) recordings of you at rest to find your HRV. The higher the HRV rate, the higher your vagal tone.[3]
A high HRV rate means your heart can speed up when in a stressful situation and return to a calm resting rhythm after it passes.
A low HRV rate means it takes your heart longer to return to a calm resting state. So you might not bounce back quickly after a tough workout, argument, or stressful meeting.
If left untreated, this could cause you to wake up tired (no matter how much you sleep) and have brain fog, or anxiety, or it could just make everything feel harder.
Symptoms of Low Vagal Tone
If your vagal nerve is damaged, underactive, or not working correctly, you may experience:
- Fatigue.
- Anxiety.
- Low or high blood pressure.
- Breathlessness.
- Brain fog.
- Difficulty swallowing.
- Loss of gag reflex.
- Irregular heartbeat.
- Low stomach acid production.
- Acid reflux.
- GERD.
- Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
However, the symptoms you experience will depend on which part of your nerve is damaged or not functioning correctly.
If you’re feeling any of these symptoms, talk to your doctor. They can help you understand if it’s your vagal nerve causing your symptoms.
Mission Connection is here to help you or your loved one take the next steps towards an improved mental well-being.
How to Improve Vagal Tone
If you’re feeling tired all the time, foggy-brained, or just feel like life is just harder, here are five ways to improve your vagal tone:
1. Slow Breathing
Breathing can affect how you feel, your energy levels, and your emotions. For instance, you’ll likely feel more panicked when you’re breathing fast.
This means controlling your breathing can actually help you calm down, along with improving your vagus nerve.[4]
While there are many breathing techniques you could use, slow breathing is one of the best because it calms the vagus nerve.
Here’s how to practice it:
- Lie on a flat surface, either on your side or on your back.
- Place your hand on your stomach.
- Inhale through your nose for four counts. Do it slowly until you feel your stomach expand like a balloon.
- Hold your breath for seven counts.
- Exhale through your nose, not your mouth, very slowly for eight counts. You want to make sure your upper chest doesn’t move at all during the process.
You should only perform this exercise at home or in a comfortable environment. But you can repeat it as many times as needed.
2. Singing
Singing can release the hormone oxytocin, which can make you feel more relaxed and happy.
It also requires you to take deep, long breaths, which are one of the best ways to stimulate your vagus nerve as it runs along the throat.
When the vagus nerve is activated, this triggers your parasympathetic system and helps you come out of a chronic fight-or-flight state. You can also try humming.
3. Meditation
Meditation can affect your vagus nerve and cause your nervous system to calm down and move into the rest-and-digest state.
Studies show that mindfulness meditation, especially when combined with deep breathing, can reduce stress and improve your sense of self.[5]
However, the direct influence of meditation on HRV isn’t clear yet. More studies are needed to confirm this link.[6]
4. Regular Exercise
Multiple studies show that regular aerobic exercise can stimulate your vagus nerve and improve your vagal tone.
And to make it even more interesting, some studies even show this isn’t a one-way street.
A 2019 review on the cardiac vagus nerve found that your vagal tone could affect your exercise capacity. The paper showed that people with high vagal tone could exercise at higher intensity with lower heart rates.[7]
So if your body is stressed or your vagal tone is very low, you might be missing out on these benefits!
5. Cold Exposure
Cold exposure to your face or neck sends a signal to activate the vagus nerve, which causes your heart to slow down and pushes your nervous system to a rest-and-digest state.
Your neck area is also full of blood vessels that contain bioreceptors that, when exposed to cold, immediately signal the vagus nerve to lower your heart rate.
In fact, a study found that just 16-second intervals of cold exposure to the neck or the face could cause the heart rate to slow down.[8]
6. Improve Sleep Habits
Chronic lack of sleep can cause the body to go into a constant fight-or-flight state. This can overstimulate your vagus nerve and cause your HRV levels to drop.
It can also increase cortisol (the stress hormone) and cause incorrect brain signaling that could trigger gut inflammation.
In fact, animal studies show that lower sleep duration could cause depression and low HRV, which means low vagal tone. This means correcting your sleep could be the best step you could take to improve your vagal tone.[9]
Get Vagal Tone Improvement Support at Mission Connection
If you’re feeling tired even after sleeping a full eight hours, anxious all the time, or like life has become harder than before even when nothing has changed, you might be dealing with low vagal tone.
At Mission Connection, our team of licensed mental health professionals goes beyond traditional treatment and provides life-changing care. We create a structured care plan for every patient that consists of evidence-based therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) to help your brain stop reading safe situations as dangerous.
We offer several options for effective outpatient treatment, including in-person programs at our locations in California, Virginia, and Washington, virtual telehealth, and a hybrid program that combines in-person and virtual care. Mission Connection treats a variety of mental health conditions and is in-network with most major insurance providers.
If you’re looking for a safe place to improve your vagal tone, reach out to us online or call us at 866-833-1822 to find out how we can support your long-term recovery. Our compassionate team is available 24/7 to answer your questions and provide guidance with no obligation.
